Kerry Lynette MACKAY -
possibly located
Kerry Lynette MACKAY -
possibly located
September 1st 2007 - Kerry's car has been located in the Durikai State
Forest near Warwick, QLD. The remains of Kerry's pet birds were found inside the
car but no trace of Kerry or her dog Grizzly have been located at this stage.
Police are currently searching the forest near the car. The car had a flat tyre
but was in otherwise good mechanical condition. No foul play is suggested.
Last
Seen: 27 February 2003
DOB: 1963
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Brown
Height: 154
Build: Medium
Complexion: Fair
Peculiarities: None known
Circumstances: Kerry was last seen at the Wondai Road Caravan Park
Chinchilla, Qld at 0715hrs. Kerry then attended Chinchilla showgrounds and
collected her dog and four pet birds. Kerry was believed to be travelling
to Dalby but has not been seen since. She was driving a white 1990 Toyota
Corolla hatchback Qld Registration number 960FTH
April 18, 2003
Kerry Lynette Mackay was last seen at a mobile park at Wondai Road, Chinchilla at 7am on Thursday 27 February 2003. She left a note for family members indicating that she was going to drive to Dalby and then onto Brisbane. Ms Mackay last withdrew money from an ATM at Dalby on February 27. An unconfirmed sighting was reported of her buying fuel in Moonie on February 27. However since then she has not accessed her bank accounts or contacted family. On March 31, there was an unconfirmed sighting of Ms Mackay about 3.30pm at the intersection of Vulture and Boundary Roads West End but further investigations failed to locate her. Ms Mackay suffers from a medical condition that requires medication and police have concerns for her safety and welfare. She is described as 154cm tall, medium build, with a fair complexion, brown shoulder length hair and brown eyes. She was last seen driving a white 1990 Toyota Corolla hatch back registration number 960 FTH. The car has a colourful side deco and rear black louvered sunshade. Ms Mackay was travelling with her large black stumpy tailed dog called 'Grizzly', two parrots and two budgies.
Anyone who has any information on Ms Mackay's whereabouts is asked to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
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On February 27, 2003, Lesley Lloyd's sister, 40-year-old
Kerry Mackay, set off from Chinchilla, Qld, to drive the 700km to Lesley's house
in Cunnamulla. She never arrived.
"The night before Kerry went missing, I spoke to her. She'd been staying in the
caravan park at Chinchilla, while she looked for a house to buy. After she left
the park to visit me, she picked up two birds and a dog from my ex-husband. He'd
been looking after them for her while she was living in the park, so she had a
full load.
She was driving a white 1990 Toyota Corolla hatch, registration plates 960 FTH.
It's a long way to travel and she could have been planning to stay at the St
George Caravan Park, but I'll never know, because she didn't get that far. The
people who run the Moonie servo, where she asked for directions to St George,
were the last people who saw her. She just vanished.
I know she didn't get to St George because she would've had to buy more petrol
from there. We've put up posters all along the highway and we've advertised. The
police held a search at the time, but found no sign of her. It's a flat stretch
of road, you'd see a car if it had gone off the side, but there've been no signs
of that. We thought she might have driven onto a property along that road but we
checked and no-one said they'd seen her. Neither the car nor her dog have been
found. I've been up and down that road heaps of times, it gives me a funny
feeling doing it though — it's eerie. Kerry is very family-oriented, she'd
always keep in touch and call. She hasn't touched her bank account or mobile
since then. I was paying the mobile bill for a while — and I left a lot of
messages on it for her. I even left a message telling her she had a new niece,
born in December. My mind's going about 100 miles an hour. My son had a
breakdown after Kerry went missing. He was very close to her, but he's back on
his feet now. I get pretty stressed out sometimes that I haven't got any family
to help with this except for my partner. If I saw her again, I'd probably have a
heart attack, but sometimes I look down our street and wish her car would drive
up into my driveway. "
- with thanks to WOMAN'S DAY Magazine
A skull and bones found in a remote area of Queensland bush are most likely those of a Chinchilla woman Kerry Lynette Mackay, who disappeared with her dog 17 years ago after leaving her home and getting hopelessly lost on her way to Cunnamulla.
A skull and bones found in a remote area of Queensland bushland are most likely those of a woman who disappeared with her dog 17 years ago when she became stranded with a flat tyre.
Kerry Lynette Mackay was last seen on February 27, 2003, when she set off from Chinchilla to visit her sister 700km away in Cunnamulla.
But the 39-year-old had inexplicably drove in the wrong direction and police now believe they may have discovered her remains in the Durikai State Forest, 27km west of Warwick.
Police had refocused their search in the state forest in 2007 – four years after Kerry vanished – after her abandoned car was discovered by a member of the Queensland Nature Conservation Group.
One of the car’s tyres had been punctured by a stick and the remains of her birds were in a cage on the back seat.
There was no sign of Kerry’s Labrador-cross Grizzly, who was never far from her side.
Kerry’s sister, Lesley Lloyd, said police contacted her this week to say a gold prospector had stumbled across bones not far from where the car was found.
Ms Lloyd said she’d been told there was a “strong possibility” the bones belonged to her missing sister.
“Either way, it’s going to be a shock, isn’t it?” she said.
“Even though it’s expected, it’s just been hanging over us so long, it’s still a shock when you hear something like that.
“Unless you find the body, there’s always that possibility she may turn up somewhere.”
Ms Lloyd said her sister suffered from schizophrenia and had taken the loss of their mother two years earlier hard.
But she was adamant Kerry would not have taken her own life and believes her disappearance wasn’t taken seriously in the early days.
“She never, ever would have done that,” she said.
“She would ring us all the time. She’d never go off somewhere and not ring us. And she never would have taken her animals with her if she was going to do something like that. She wouldn’t have left her birds to die in the car.”
Ms Lloyd said she believed her sister’s dog Grizzly, a nine-year-old Labrador cross, would have died near her.
“I don’t think he’d go too far away from her, I think he’d stay near her. He was really her baby,” Ms Lloyd said.
“She’d had him since he was a few months old. He would have stayed close to her.”
Ms Lloyd said she believed her sister had become hopelessly lost. She was known to have a terrible sense of direction and had only had a driver’s licence for 18 months.
“She’d never driven out here before – whether or not she got in her car and went the wrong way, I don’t know,” she said.
“She had a very bad sense of direction.”
Ms Lloyd said she wanted to thank two friends of her mother’s in Chinchilla – Glenda Grey and Jim Austin – who spent an enormous amount of time looking for Kerry in the early years.
“They were incredible,” she said.
“They saved my sanity I think. They put posters up everywhere. They rang all the property owners along that road, rang the service stations. Their support was incredible. You felt so helpless back then, in the early stages, but they were always coming up with ideas on what to do next.
“Otherwise I would have just felt like I was beating my head up against a brick wall.”
Police will now do a DNA comparison test to determine whether the bones belong to Kerry.
